HR Magazine: Promoted on proof, waved through on potential: the real story behind the FTSE 100 gender gap

HR magazine asked me to comment this week on the latest FTSE 100 figures, and one number has stuck with me since: 169 men in executive director roles across the FTSE 100, and 51 women.

Every time data like this lands, the response is usually something about building a stronger pipeline of women, as if the shortage is the problem. It isn't. The women are there, I coach them. What we're really looking at is what happens to them on the way up, and it starts a long way below the boardroom.

The bit I said in the piece that I most believe is this. We still tend to promote women once they've proven themselves, and men on the potential that they might. It sounds like a technicality. Stretch it across a career and you see one group being asked to earn what the other is simply given.

There's more tangled up in it, the quiet penalty for a woman who advocates for herself, the way ambition fades when the top never looks like you. If I could get every leader to change one thing though, it would be that reflex to wait for proof from some people and extend trust to others.

None of this shifts with good intentions or another annual target. It shifts when someone actually tracks who gets handed the work that builds a route to the top, and is honest about whether it's the same for everyone.

Read the full piece on HR Magazine.